One thing CDs have going for them lately is their safety. Consequently, a short-term CD or another insured bank product could be a better option for savers than the safest investment in the world: United States Treasury securities.

Think the economy is recovering because the job market has improved? Think again. The employment report released today is disappointing, at best. The U.S. economy added only 120,000 jobs in March, half of what it added in February, the Labor Department says. After three months of solid employment gains, the latest report shows the economy

Pennsylvania retirement planner Daniel White points out this startling retirement planning calculation: He says that in 2000, the average Social Security benefit was $840 per month. To make an equivalent amount of money outside of Social Security – $10,080 per year — a saver who put his money in five-year Treasuries earning the going rate

When the stock market resembles nothing so much as a sinking ship, the urge to flee can be strong. Indeed, in recent weeks, people have been making their egress from stocks. The Investment Company Institute, or ICI, reports that equity mutual funds lost $1.99 billion in the week ending September 14. For nervous investors, there

Being mistaken can be embarrassing but it’s always better to admit the mistake, cut your losses and move on. And Bill Gross is moving on from his recent mistake: his well-known estrangement from longer-term U.S. Treasuries. Earlier this year the co-chief investment officer of Pimco and manager of the Pimco Total Return Fund, announced that

During QE1 and QE2 — the first and second rounds of quantitative easing — the Federal Reserve made large-scale purchases of various securities ranging from housing agency debt (of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) and mortgage-backed securities, or MBS, to longer-term government bonds. The purchase of these assets was meant to create liquidity

Bonds continue to be a hot topic in the news. Reuters reported this morning that the 10-year Treasury note is yielding 2.44 percent, a new low since January 2009. I’m writing a story about buying bonds and have run into a couple of different strategies that investment advisers are using right now when it comes

Recently there’s been some low-level agitation in the news about a Treasury bond bubble as investors continue flock to safe investments. In my last post I mentioned the Wall Street Journal article “The Great American Bond Bubble,” but not everyone agrees with the authors’, Jeremy Siegel and Jeremy Schwartz, basic premise that pessimistic investors are

Yesterday the Federal Reserve resumed purchasing Treasury bonds in hopes of bolstering the economy and fighting deflation fears. Purchases are being made with proceeds from principal payments on mortgage-backed securities. The Federal Reserve completed its $1.25 trillion purchasing program of agency mortgage-backed securities in March 2010. According to the Web site for the Federal Reserve

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